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that lady that got murdered
Jun. 26th, 2021 05:32 amvia https://ift.tt/35Smtr0
Thursday night Farmsister and I picked up Mom and went over to the Brown’s taproom at Walloomsac for dinner.
It was Farmsister’s first dinner sitting in a restaurant since the onset of the plague. (I took a photo of her eating her First Hot French Fry!!!!!) It was lovely. the service was deadly slow but we didn’t mind much, it was novel to be out together. Mom discovered at the end that her credit card was missing, so I bought dinner, and then she discovered that her credit card wallet was actually just on the floor of Farmsister’s car, so it was a quick resolution at least.
But I got not one but Two wacky stories, so I’m gonna tell them one at a time. And here’s the first one:
cut; discussions of small town life and a lady who got murdered
We were driving through Johnsonville, which is part of the other town that makes up the school district where Mom taught and where we all went to school. (Two towns, and I grew up in the other one.)
We passed a nondescript house off to the left, and Mom, who’d been pointing out local bits of interest and such, said, “Oh, and that’s the house where that lady got murdered, you know?”
“What?” I had no idea what she was talking about, and Farmsister, weirdly, also didn’t seem to– she’s much more tuned-in to local gossip.
“You know,” Mom said, “that lady! Whose ex-husband poisoned her with rat poison?”
It transpired that this “lady” was one year behind Farmsister in school, which was why FS had not recognized the anecdote from the description. That was the part she proceeded to object to. How could someone younger than her possibly be described as that lady. I had to break it to her that she’s pretty middle-aged now. (I have to do math. 36, girl, you’re 36. Strangers would definitely describe you as that lady.)
I was objecting that there’d been a local murder I hadn’t heard about. Apparently it took a year for toxicology to figure out that it was strychnine and not a drug overdose. No one has been charged. She was living with an ex-husband, who has since been arrested for assaulting a different partner in the ensuing time. And she was dating an unsavory fellow, who’s also under suspicion. People have lawn signs, “Justice for [Firstname]”, and one of the local diners donates a portion of the proceeds from every one they sell of a particular entree toward the Justice For [Lady] Fund. One of Mom’s knitting bee buddies taught her daughter (of whom she did not have custody) at the time. It’s very sad, clearly her life was not going super well, and law enforcement doesn’t seem to think her life worth very much. But my sister is mostly just offended by being considered A Lady.
OK that one wasn’t as funny in the retelling as it was at the time. Trust me, three of us in a car and my sister, driving, going slightly shrill as she repeats “That lady?” and my mom continues to unperturbedly fill us in on everyone she knows who knows the participants, as we drive up to the bridge over the Hoosic River, was extremely my family dynamic, though usually it’s louder because usually there are more of us in any given place. (Your picture was not posted)
